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Then Jack began to wonder where the other two men might be, for thus far he had failed to discover either in the room of the lighted window. Could it be possible both of them had sailed away aboard that Lockheed-Vega ship, bent on some important mission which the Master had entrusted to their care?
Neither Jack nor his companion had ever set eyes on him before, he was an entirely different personage from the short party and the longer-limbed man they had so lately been watching before the reckless pilot of the Lockheed-Vega plane departed toward the east.
He's a wonder, all right, in his double line, Perk, and not to be underrated, understand." "Seems that way, partner," grumbled the other quickly adding, "there goes the Lockheed-Vega spinnin' out o' the lagoon to the open lake so's to get up enough speed for the take-off. Must be somethin' mighty special to coax that pilot to risk bein' seen in open daylight.
Say Jack, take a look at my head an' see if it's sound still gee whiz! but it felt like the sky'd gone an' dropped down on me." Jack speedily reassured him that although there was a lovely lump on the top of his head, it was nothing very serious. It was understood that there was not a minute to waste if they were wise. The Lockheed-Vega might blow in any time and give them trouble.
"Mebbe the Lockheed-Vega comin' back again?" ventured Perk. "Hardly likely," he was told instantly, "For one thing you'll notice this motor racket swings up to us from the southwest, while the other ship struck off toward the east." "That's straight goods," Perk hastened to admit. "Funny I didn't get on to that right away.
Perk was muttering in subdued excitement as his astonished eyes fell upon a plane bobbing on its pontoons in a sheltered little cove, "meet that spruce Lockheed-Vega bus, partner, that clipped past away over our heads, an' the woozy pilot never dreamin' our crate was within a hundred miles o' him. Kinder guess the pirate roost must lie around here somewhere."
"An' nothin' happened to give him a spill, either," Perk went on to say and the disconsolate vein in his tone told plainly enough how he had been secretly hugging to his heart a hope that the motor of the Lockheed-Vega crate might suddenly develop some fault, compelling the flight to be abandoned in its inception.
"'Taint him, anyway, that's dead sure, Jack, I guess I ought to know a Lockheed-Vega crate, no matter how far away, or by what tricky moonlight either, 'cause you see I used to run one o' that breed for nearly a year when I took a whirl at the air-mail business up north out o' Chicago till I had a bad crash an' quit cold."
What did they fetch on their voyage through the upper air lanes, coming from some unknown port hardly "case stuff," Jack told himself, since space aboard the Lockheed-Vega crate would be limited then it must be either yellow Chinks trying to crash the gates of the country that banned some of their race as undesirable aliens, or possibly the winged courier carried a batch of precious stones from far-away Paris, forwarded in a round-about, surreptitious way and intended to reach a ready market in the wealthiest country in the world, of course, without paying the usual heavy customs duty which saving alone would likely reach well into six figures.
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